Beethoven Symphony No. 9 and David Amram’s Elegy for Violin and Orchestra at Carnegie Hall – January 28, 2019 at 8PM

New York, NY – Music for Life International continues its decade-long tradition of global humanitarian concerts with Beethoven for The Rohingya, a benefit concert featuring Beethoven’s monumental Ninth Symphony, presented in the Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall on Monday, January 28, 2019. Beethoven for The Rohingya is an urgent call to the global community to raise awareness for the nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees fleeing what the United Nations have defined as genocide in Rakhine State in Myanmar. Refugees, who are seeking safety in Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and other nearby locations, are grossly lacking access to healthcare when it is needed most; net proceeds from this performance will benefit Doctors Without Borders/Médécins Sans Frontières (MSF), which provides medical aid to those who are among the world’s most vulnerable.

Beethoven for The Rohingya is the eighth in a series of global humanitarian concerts presented by Music For Life International at Carnegie Hall. Music for Life International, which gathers together distinguished artists from the world’s finest orchestras, ensembles and institutions, has built its model and fine reputation on the concept that music itself is a vital source of energy, compassion, and universality and has raised more than $3.2 million in response to various humanitarian crises since its inception. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony will be led by conductor and Music For Life Artistic Director, George Mathew, and will feature renowned American violinist, Elmira Darvarova, soprano Indra Thomas, mezzo-soprano Sarah Heltzel, tenor Sean Panikkar, and bass Soloman Howard, with remarks by Dr. John Lawrence, President, Board of Directors of Doctors Without Borders.

American cultural giant, artistic icon of the Beat Generation and 20th century musical titan David Amram will conduct his own Elegy for Violin and Orchestra, with Darvarova as the soloist. Amram’s poignant and deeply elegiac poem of lyrical yearning is offered as a memorial for the dead for whom intervention comes too late. With this concert, Amram makes his first conducting appearance at Carnegie Hall in more than 50 years, when he was the New York Philharmonic’s first Composer-in-Residence, appointed by Leonard Bernstein.

Maestro Amram reflects on the concert, “Beethoven for The Rohingya is not only a musical feast for those who participate and share what we love to do, but it also shows that in 2019, New York remains a place where we welcome refugees and immigrants. This concert celebrates the spirit of generosity, the hallmark of the great classical music, which continues to survive the test of time and inspires those who create, as Beethoven and Schiller did, for the immortal Ninth Symphony.”

Beethoven for The Rohingya comprises many of the finest classical musicians of the day, representing more than 70 international ensembles and organizations, their artistry donated. The Montclair State University Chorale performs the colossal choral score with conductor Heather J. Buchanan in their Carnegie Hall debut.

Music For Life International Founder and Artistic Director George Mathew remarks that, “This performance and Beethoven’s vast final symphony are clarion calls to all people everywhere to recognize our common humanity. The Ninth is a symphonic statement against discrimination and against religious and ethnic persecution of any kind whether anti-Semitism, islamophobia or the virulent anti-immigrant sentiment rising up all over the world.” He observes, “coming one day after World Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27th, 2019, while the United Nations holds its UN Holocaust Memorial, Beethoven for The Rohingya, seeks to remind all of us, why Beethoven’s own words in the Ninth Symphony ‘Friends, NOT these horrific sounds but let us give voice to something better and more joyful,’ speaks to all who say ‘never again.’”

About the Ninth Symphony, George Mathew observes, “Beethoven himself makes a musical point in the Finale which is at the heart of our mission with this concert. Writing in an earlier era of tension between East and West, Beethoven sets the famous Ode to Joy to percussion instruments of the Turkish military tradition, i.e. music of the Islamic world, to provide rhythmic stability and indeed security for the German (western) setting of the famous tune. At that moment Beethoven seems to become the voice of a whole civilization in a rare moment of embrace of another civilization. Two hundred years later, it appears we still have much to learn from this great wise man of music and the world.” Mr. Mathew noted, “In gathering together as a community of musicians, listeners, and supporters we are sending a message of solidarity and human support to our Rohingya brothers and sisters. There is no more fitting way that we can respond to this 21st century genocide perpetrated on the Rohingya people, currently one of the most vulnerable minorities on earth.”

Music for Life International, (MFLI) is a New York based social enterprise that was established to create social impact in a variety of sectors through music. MFLI presents musical concerts and other programs to promote the awareness of major international humanitarian crises and other public interest issues around the world. MFLI takes its name from the legendary MUSIC FOR LIFE concert organized by Leonard Bernstein for those affected by HIV/AIDS in 1987 at Carnegie Hall. MFLI is a registered 501(c)(3) tax-exempt not-for-profit organization. MFLI’s global humanitarian concerts have included Beethoven’s Ninthfor South Asia (2006), Requiem for Darfur (2007), Mahler for the Children of AIDS (2009), Beethoven for the Indus Valley (2011), Shostakovich for the Children of Syria (2014), The Scheherazade Initiative (2015), and Mahler for Vision (2017), focusing on ending preventable cataract blindness and using cutting-edge technology and transformative socio-economic models for distributing these critical public health services. These concerts, presented in Carnegie Hall, have brought together distinguished musicians from over 100 leading international ensembles including the New York Philharmonic, MET Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, and others.

These concerts have received major global coverage in the BBC WORLD TV and Radio, CNN International, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, Radio France, Voice of America, NY1 TV, National Public Radio, the Indian Express, The Hindu, the Pakistan Daily Times, and Musical America. The New York Times called Music for Life International’s humanitarian concert, Shostakovich for the Children of Syria, a performance which “will live in the memoryfor having been being part of its time as well as part of Shostakovich’s.”

MFLI’s collaborations have included Doctors Without Borders, Refugees International, Acumen Fund, American Pakistan Foundation, American Jewish World Service, Catholic Medical Mission board, Questscope, Tufts University Institute for Global Leadership, and United Nations agencies such as UNICEF, UNDP, UN Women, and the UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women.

In recent years, MFLI’s activities have expanded beyond New York and Carnegie Hall to include performances in the Netherlands, Panama, Jordan, Washington DC, Melbourne, Australia, Mumbai and New Delhi, India. Shostakovich for the Children of Syria at Carnegie Hall in January 2014, resulted in a weeklong residency of performances and education workshops at the Za’atari Syrian Refugee Camp in Jordan by a distinguished group of artists from the MET Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic, New World Symphony, and Jordanian National Symphony.

Doctors Without Borders/Médécins Sans Frontières (MSF) works in nearly 70 countries providing medical aid to those most in need regardless of their race, religion, or political affiliation. MSF has been working in Bangladesh since 1985 but has been most recently involved in providing aid to refugees who have fled targeted violence in Myanmar since 2017.

MSF has massively scaled up operations in Cox’s Bazar district in direct response to the influx of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Rohingya refugees from Myanmar fleeing a campaign of targeted violence that began on August 25, 2017. By May 2018, there were more than 713,000 new arrivals at makeshift camps in Bangladesh. They join hundreds of thousands of other Rohingya who had fled earlier waves of violence and persecution in Myanmar. This is among the largest and fastest-growing refugee emergencies in decades, according to the United Nations. The Rohingya are a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority who have lived in Myanmar for hundreds of years. Denied citizenship by Myanmar’s government, they are stateless and face particular challenges obtaining access to health care and other basic rights. In December 2017, MSF released the results of mortality surveys documenting the shocking scope of recent violence against the Rohingya community in Myanmar. Teams in Bangladesh are treating survivors for bullet, blast, and stab wounds and injuries related to sexual violence.

Since 2017 teams in Bangladesh carried out 309,900 outpatient consultations, 30,800 antenatal consultations, and 10,600 individual mental health consultations. Staff are responding to a range of illnesses directly related to poor living conditions in the makeshift settlements, including respiratory tract infections, diarrheal diseases, and infant malnutrition. MSF is vaccinating children and pregnant women in its facilities to support the Bangladeshi government’s initiative to expand routine vaccination in the camps. Other activities include water and sanitation efforts and mental health care services. For more information on Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), visit doctorswithoutborders.org.

Featured Artists

George Mathew, Artistic Director/Conductor
Indian-American humanitarian and conductor, George Mathew, founder and Artistic Director of Music for Life International and the Ubuntu-Shruti Orchestra, has emerged as one of the leading forces in the classical music world bringing symphonic music to focus on global humanitarian issues at the beginning of the 21st Century. In recent seasons, he has made appearances in the US, India, Jordan, Panama, Morocco, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Africa as conductor and ambassador for transformative action through music. Beethoven for The Rohingya is Music for Life International and Mr. Mathew’s eighth global humanitarian concert at Carnegie Hall in 13 years.

Mr. Mathew is a thought leader and has spoken on music and social impact around the world at such venues as the TEDx and INK conferences, UNDP, UNICEF, BNP Paribas, IBM India, Asian Venture Philanthropy Network, in Singapore, Amman, Marrakech, New Delhi, Boston, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Amsterdam and Panama City. He also delivered the 2011 S.T. Lee Distinguished Lecture on Social Justice and Public Policy at Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg. He has lectured at Wellesley College, Tufts University, Amherst College, He appears as commentator in “Following the Ninth,” an exciting new documentary film on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Mr. Mathew is an alumnus of Amherst College, the University of Minnesota and the Manhattan School of Music. In February 2016, Mr. Mathew and Music for Life International were honored with the 2016 Robert and JoAnn Bendetson Award for Public Diplomacy from the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University, for their services to global public diplomacy through music.

David Amram, Composer and Guest Conductor

David Amram started his professional life in music as a French Hornist in the National Symphony Orchestra in the early 1950s, as well as playing French horn in the legendary jazz bands of Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Pettiford and Lionel Hampton. Appointed by Leonard Bernstein as the first Composer In Residence for the New York Philharmonic in 1966, he also composed the scores for the films Pull My Daisy (1959), Splendor In The Grass (1960) and The Manchurian Candidate (1962). A prolific composer for over 60 years, Amram’s most recent symphonic compositions include: a string orchestra version of his Greenwich Village Portraits for saxophone and orchestra, which premiered in February 2018 by the Orchestra Indian Hill in Boston; and a double concerto for violin, cello and orchestras, Partners, premiered by the University of Michigan Orchestra in 2018.

He has collaborated as a composer with Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, Eugene Ormandy, Langston Hughes and Jacques D’Amboise and as a musician with Thelonious Monk, Johnny Depp, Hunter S. Thompson, Odetta, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Betty Carter, Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Paquito D’Rivera and Tito Puente. In 1957, Amram created and performed in the first ever Jazz/Poetry readings in New York City with novelist Jack Kerouac.

Elmira Darvarova, Concertmaster and Solo Violin

Grammy®-nominated recording artist, a concert violinist since the age of four, and an award-winning performer (2017 & 2018 GOLD MEDAL at the Global Music Awards), Elmira Darvarova caused a sensation, becoming the first ever (and so far only) female concertmaster in the history of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. With the MET Orchestra she has performed with the greatest conductors of our time, including the legendary Carlos Kleiber. She studied with Yfrah Neaman at the Guildhall School in London (on a British Council scholarship), with Josef Gingold at Indiana University in Bloomington (as one of his assistants), and with Henryk Szeryng (privately). An award-winning artist (Gold Medal at the 2017 and 2018 Global Music Awards, the Gold Quill Award by Classic FM Radio, and the Boris Christoff Medal), and hailed by American Records Guide as a “marvelous violinist in the Heifetz tradition”, Elmira Darvarova can be heard on numerous CDs, recorded for several labels (recent releases include the world premiere recording of Vernon Duke’s violin concerto with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, and a CD with world-premiere recordings of chamber music by René de Castéra, named by MusicWeb International a RECORD OF THE YEAR 2015). Her recordings have won critical acclaim in such esteemed publications as The Strad, Gramophone, Fanfare, American Record Guide, and BBC Music Magazine. She has been awarded extensive critical acclaim, including Gramophone for her “ultra-impassioned performances”, and in The Strad for her “intoxicating tonal beauty and beguilingly sensuous phrasing” and “silky-smooth voluptuous tone.”

Indra Thomas, Soprano
Considered one of the foremost Aidas in the world today, Ms. Thomas has appeared at many of the world’s great opera houses, such as the Metropolitan Opera and the Vienna State Opera; and prominent venues in France, Germany, Spain and England, including the Royal Albert Hall. Among numerous top orchestras with which she has appeared are the New York Philharmonic, the London Symphony and Leipzig’s Gewandhaus Orchestra – as well as leading orchestras in Paris, Spain, Brazil, the Netherlands, Japan, Finland, South Korea, Malaysia, Abu Dhabi, Boston, Cleveland and Detroit.

In the wake of her professional debut at Carnegie Hall in Messa di Requiem by Verdi, her work has been marked by rapturous public and critical acclaim. Ms. Thomas has graced several famous music festivals, to include the London Proms, Bregenz Festspiele, Chorégies, d’Orange and Festival International de Musique de Colmar. She has also appeared to great acclaim in operas by Puccini, Wagner, Mozart and Bellini. Her favored non-operatic music encompasses Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Missa Solemnis, Britten’s War Requiem, Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder, R. Strauss’s Four Last Songs, and Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand” (No. 8). She has recorded for NPR, as well as the LSO Live and Naxos labels; her work has garnered both an Emmy and a Grammy nomination.

Sarah Heltzel, Mezzo-Soprano
“Vocally striking and visually appealing” (New York Times), American mezzo-soprano Sarah Heltzel consistently “sets the stage ablaze with her vocal and dramatic pyrotechnics” (HoustonChronicle). Ms. Heltzel’s engagements this season include her Australian debut as Offred in A Handmaid’s Tale in Melbourne, a return to Wichita Grand Opera for the title role in Carmen, and Bernstein’s SONGFEST with the Maverick Chamber Orchestra in Woodstock, NY.

In recent seasons Ms. Heltzel has appeared in roles from Principessa d’Eboli in Don Carlo (Wichita Grand Opera) to Suzuki in Madama Butterfly (Indianapolis, Amarillo, Syracuse, Nevada, Opera on the James), from der Komponist in Ariadne auf Naxos (Winter Opera St Louis) to Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana (String Orchestra of Brooklyn). Concert performances include Verdi’s Requiem with Symphony Syracuse, Wichita Symphony, Back Bay Chorale and at Carnegie Hall with Music for Life International, Handel’s Messiah and Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass with Seattle Symphony, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Boston Philharmonic and Minot Symphony Orchestra, Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder with the Gordon College Symphony, Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with the Boston Chamber Music Society, and Struggle to Forgive (Fagin, world premiere) with the Knickerbocker Orchestra in New York City, as well as numerous recitals with collaborator Miloš Repický. She has been a grant recipient and prizewinner from The Wagner Society of New York, The Liederkranz Foundation, The Gerda Lissner Foundation, the Career Bridges Competition, and the Palm Beach Opera Vocal Competition.

Sean Panikkar, Tenor

Sean Panikkar, an American tenor of Sri Lankan heritage, made his Metropolitan Opera debut in Manon Lescaut and his European operatic debut in Mozart’s Zaïde at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in a production directed by Peter Sellars and conducted by Louis Langrée. Sean Panikkar made his Salzburg Festival debut this past summer as Dionysus in Henze’s The Bassarids directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski. Highlights of the 2018-19 season include a Los Angeles Opera debut as Gandhi in Philip Glass’ Satyagraha directed by Phelim McDermott led by Grant Gershon, and a return to the Festival d’Aix en Provence as Jakob Schmidt and Toby in Kurt Weill’s Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny directed by Ivo van Hove and conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. Core repertoire presentations include La Bohème at Pittsburgh Opera, Carmen with North Carolina Opera, and Les Pêcheurs de Perles at the Lyric Opera of Kansas City.

Highly prized as an interpreter of contemporary music, Sean Panikkar created the roles of Adam in Giorgio Battistelli’s CO2 for a debut at Teatro alla Scala, conducted by Cornelius Meister and directed by Robert Carsen; Wendell Smith in Daniel Sonenberg and Mark Campbell’s The Summer King in a co-production between Pittsburgh Opera and Michigan Opera Theatre; Agent Henry Rathbone in a co-production of David T. Little’s JFK at the Fort Worth Opera and Opéra de Montréal; and the title role of Jack Perla’s Shalimar the Clown for Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Numerous engagements with the Metropolitan Opera feature the The Death of Klinghoffer conducted by David Robertson and directed by Tom Morris, Guillaume Tell directed by Pierre Audi led by Gianandrea Noseda, Roméo et Juliette under the baton of Plácido Domingo, Lucia di Lammermoor conducted by Marco Armiliato, and Ariadne auf Naxos led by Kirill Petrenko.

Soloman Howard, Bass
Soloman Howard garners high praise from the press for his vivid performances on the great opera and concert stages of the world. Soloman Howard’s voice is described as “sonorous” by TheNew York Times, “superhuman” by The Denver Post, and “a triumph” by The Guardian. Soloman Howard’s 2018-19 season features returns to the Metropolitan Opera as The King in Aida conducted by Nicola Luisotti; to Los Angeles Opera as the Frate in Don Carlo under the baton of James Conlon; Santa Fe Opera as Colline in La bohème conducted by Jader Bignamini; and to Washington National Opera to reprise the title role he created for the company in The Lion, The Unicorn, and Me by Jeanine Tesori and J.D. McClatchy. He makes a Canadian operatic debut on the stage of Opéra de Montréal as Fafner in Das Rheingold under the baton of Michael Christie. Soloman Howard brings the roles of Somnus and Cadmus into his repertoire in an international tour of Semele with Harry Bicket leading The English Concert and makes a debut with the Handel & Haydn Society in performances of Mozart’s Requiem conducted by Music Director Harry Christophers.

Last season international opera house debuts were celebrated on three continents: at San Francisco Opera in Turandot conducted by Music Director Nicola Luisotti; at the Teatro Real in Aida; and at the Teatro Municipal de Santiago, Chile in Don Giovanni. Other notable opera performances included Aida at the Washington National Opera, Rigoletto at North Carolina Opera, and Madama Butterfly at Santa Fe Opera. In concert, Soloman Howard gave his first performances of Hunding in Die Walküre at the Miami Music Festival; he also sang Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony both with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic on a European tour and with Christian Arming and the Vienna Chamber Orchestra on tour in Asia.

Montclair State University Chorale
MSU Chorale is the core choral ensemble and symphonic choir in the John J. Cali School of Music. This semester it comprises 160 voices including music students majoring in performance, music education, music therapy, composition, music theatre, as well as non-music majors with choral experience. The Chorale’s 2018-19 season opened with three magnificent performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony under the baton of Xian Zhang to celebrate the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra’s season opening. Their long-standing relationship with the NJSO features a range of masterworks, including Howard Shore’s Academy Award winning The Lord of the Rings Symphony, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (Neeme Järvi conductor), Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 and Verdi’s epic Messa da Requiem twice with Neeme Järvi (January 2010) and Jacques Lacombe (April 2014). Choral repertoire highlights include an interdisciplinary performance of Carmina Burana (Orff) with the department of theatre and dance (April 2017), Ein Deutsches Requiem (Brahms), Duruflé Requiem, Saint Nicolas (Britten), Fauré Requiem, Chichester Psalms (Bernstein), the regional premiere of Parables (Aldridge) in collaboration with the MSU Symphony Orchestra for the 2011 Crawford Concert, Annelies (Whitbourn) for the April 2015 Holocaust Memorial Concert, and the Tri-state premiere of Alzheimer’s Stories (Cohen) for the 2015 Crawford Concert, and the New Jersey premiere performance of Jubilate Deo by Dan Forrest (May 2018). The MSU Chorale is supported by a dynamic group of 27 student leaders who serve as managers, section leaders, conductors, accompanists, and publicity/social media advocates.

Heather Buchanan, MSU Chorale Conductor

Australian-born conductor Heather J. Buchanan, PhD, is Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at Montclair State University (MSU) where she conducts the curricular choirs Chorale and University Singers, and the extracurricular project choirs Vocal Accord and Prima Voce. Choirs under her direction have won critical acclaim for their “heartfelt conviction,” “vibrant sound,” “grace and precision,” and for singing with the “crispness and dexterity of a professional choir.” During her tenure, MSU choirs have collaborated with a variety of renowned artists and composers including Meredith Monk, Richard Alston Dance Company (RADC-UK), Chen Yi, Mícheál ÓSúílleabháin (Ireland), Tarik o’Reagan, members of the Vienna Philharmonic Strings (Austria), and conductors Neeme Järvi, Jacques Lacombe, Xian Zhang, George Manahan, Patrick Duprè Quigley, John Maucceri, Jeffrey Schindler, and Susie Benchasil Seiter with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra (NJSO).

Her publications include the landmark GIA choral series Teaching Music through Performance in Choir (Vols. 1-3), a book chapter “Body Mapping: Enhancing Voice Performance through Somatic Pedagogy” in Teaching Singing in the 21st Century (Sprinter), a DVD Evoking Sound: Body Mapping & Gesture Fundamentals, and choral octavos in the Evoking Sound Choral Series (GIA). Guest conducting and residency engagements are wide-ranging and include US and international venues. Recent highlights include Passion of Italy 2017 (Rome & Florence); The 2016 Fall for Dance festival in NYC; Firenze 2015 (Florence, Italy); the Australian Voices across the Pacific choral festival (July 2014); the Queensland Conservatorium’s 2014 State Honours Education Program (Australia); Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb with RADC for Peak Performances 10th Anniversary, again at Sadler’s Wells (London) for the RADC 20th Anniversary Season Opening; the 30th Anniversary Pacific Basin Music Festival (Hawaii); CODA Festivals at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Centre for the performing Arts; and headlining the 2017 Australian Choral Conductor’s Education and Training Summer School (Melbourne) where she will return in January 2020.

Beethoven for The Rohingya Orchestra

The Beethoven for The Rohingya Orchestra is comprised of artists from the following ensembles and institutions, many of whom are principal musicians, who have generously donated their time and services: